A man holds a pro-EU sign during an anti-Brexit rally in Cardiff after Wales voted to leave the EU.
Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images

The dust may have started to settle after the EU referendum, but the tectonic plates will be shifting for some time. Wales voted to leave. The result was narrow, meaning that all political forces must respect the 48% who voted to remain. But it was not narrow enough to be overturned or called into question.

What’s clear is that many people in Wales – from all backgrounds – wanted to send a message to the establishment that they want control of their lives back, and a better deal.

For Plaid Cymru, the result stands as a reality check. If we do not provide hope and a positive future for Wales, nobody else will. Areas most in receipt of EU funding voted heavily to leave. This is neither irrational nor illogical. Underdeveloped areas lacking opportunities are the places that receive structural funds. The presence of structural funds, particularly in valleys communities, correlates with the disappearance of heavy industry. That has coincided with the disappearance or decline of hope.

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My party, the Party of Wales, is in a rare and unique position. The European values we have expressed and upheld during the campaign show that those who voted remain can have a future supporting our party. We can also make a strong and significant proposal to many of those who voted to leave.

The establishment sees Wales as a bundle of disposable labour and natural resources that can be theirs to exploit, regardless of whether those elites are in Brussels or London. I’m sure they are happy that working people are now consumed with blaming one another for the chaos they’ve created. But who wins from this?

We must stand together and make sure that whatever Westminster agrees with Brussels, Wales can still get a good deal and play a strong role on the continent and internationally. Plaid Cymru will be promoting that vision of an outward-looking and international Wales, which becomes even more important if Wales and the UK end up in some new structure linked to the European single market.

This week, the party of Wales has placed an independent Wales back on the agenda. This is not because of events of our own choosing, but because Brexit means that the UK could well be no more. This is not an attempt to say that Wales is in the same position as Scotland. We are not. We didn’t vote to remain. I am, though, very clear that Wales’s future is bound up with that of the other UK countries. If other nations are advocating this path, why would we in Wales not even be debating it as an option?

If Scotland’s protection of its EU membership results in people there choosing to leave the UK, people in Wales should be given the option of choosing the same route at a later referendum. Our view is that in those circumstances, a majority of people would want Wales to be in the EU.

This would not mean rejecting the current EU referendum result in Wales. We accept the result. We are talking about a fresh choice being put to people. In that eventuality, our material circumstances would have changed. If there is a risk in that situation of Wales being absorbed into an “England and Wales” entity, then alternative paths would have to be available.

There remain many challenges and unknowns with this, which need to be understood fully, including by the minority of people in Wales who have supported the idea of independence for some time.

Plaid Cymru is clear that independence in that context would have to include a new union structure between Wales, England and other parts of the UK – designed this time on the basis of equality and respect. Nations should always work together and cooperate, and barriers and borders should be minimal.

For Wales, our relationship with England is of utmost importance. We share a market, a currency, and in my and many other people’s case, family members too. Scottish independence as proposed by the SNP will also take these matters into consideration, and the arrangement that they reach with the EU will be instructive in our case.

Other constitutional arrangements could be proposed for Wales, England and the rest of the UK. Those other proposals would always be considered by Plaid Cymru, on the basis that everything should be on the table.

Our nation also has short-term issues that we have to move quickly to address, regardless of how and when independence is considered by people here. If the leave vote was about rejecting the establishment, it was not a vote to concentrate powers at Westminster. Wales can be strengthened in the short term, and the economic stability of our country must be secured.

The vow made by the leave campaign to Wales included millions per annum in additional funding for the NHS, and retention of structural funds, agricultural funds and all of the other benefits of EU membership. This becomes crucially important if leave campaigners form the next government.

Plaid Cymru looks to this uncertain future with determination to ensure that Wales continues to exist as a self-governing nation in its own right. Our membership has increased since last weekend and while we will set a radical agenda, we will take people in Wales along with us.